RACE 07 - The WTCC Game Q&A

RACE 07 - The WTCC Game is the latest in a rich line of recent racing sims from Swedish developer SimBin, which includes the excellent GTR 2 as well as last year's first WTCC game.

GameSpot UK recently had a chance to put some questions to Diego Sartori, the man at SimBin looking after the game's creative direction, ahead of the game's international October release.

GameSpot UK: What changes from last year’s RACE – The WTCC game do you think fans of the series will appreciate most?

Diego Sartori: First and foremost we think that the added content is what the users will appreciate the most for a variety of reasons; one of course being that more tracks and more cars are always welcome additions to a racing game, secondly the diversity of the new content makes the game span over many very unique driving experiences and therefore many new challenges.

Added content would not matter much if it was not for the new game modes or improvements to already present game modes, such as World Leader Boards, Online Time Attack and Custom Championship.

GSUK: How much was the development path for RACE 07 determined by user feedback from last year’s iteration?

DS: We do listen to our communities and we do take their feedback into account when starting a new project, but we are often way ahead of them in terms of what we internally would like to have in the game. We just have a better understanding of the process, we know the limitations of the game engine we are using, so even though we might share a wish for a new feature, for example a new game mode or even some sort of new content, it could be that we simply can not get it in the game due to license or technical reasons, and then this ends up on our internal wish list and that is rather long I can tell you.

However feedback on our games do greatly impact the future of a game series, we listen and try to adapt to the market as best we can, if we didn’t we would be out of business fast I fear.

GSUK: What can you tell us about the game’s community-oriented features?

DS: RACE07’s support for custom skins surely is the most in-your-face feature of the game when it comes to communities, already for the Demo we can see that the communities are embracing this new feature, lots and lots of new fantastic looking skins appear every day on the community forums.

Real SimRacers and real SimRacing teams in the game should also appeal and based on the initial feedback we are getting from this I can reveal that we will do more of this in the future and we are prepared to take it one or two steps further.

The Leader Board support is another community aspect of the game that we hope will grow big and become a community-oriented feature of the game, we would like to see national Leader Boards initiated by local communities and we do hope to one day see as many national Leader Boards as there is countries using our game.

One last comment on the community aspects of the game should be about how we find some of the talent we need for our productions in the very same communities, many high profile positions in the development team are currently occupied by people originally head-hunted from the communities and we are constantly looking for more talent...

GSUK: How do you deal with the challenge of making a game that is both compelling online, and satisfying offline for those who prefer to play on their own?

DS: This is a big challenge and one could say that by not focusing on one or the other 100% then neither will be 100% once in game, I do however think that we have managed to find a nice balance between what makes a good offline racing and a good online racing game while still keeping the appeal of the game bigger than just for the hardcore SimRacers.

The best way we think is to combine the two types of game play as much as possible and as fluently as possible, we feel we have achieved this goal with the inclusion of the World Leader Board support and the Online Time Attacks.

The biggest difference between RACE07 online and RACE07 offline/single player is the life span of the game, many of our users will use this game until a new game in the series is released. They will join leagues or enter competitions, or they will race in pick up races online. We added the Custom Championship function and the Car Filter option to game’s single player segment in order to create some of the same level of longevity, the possible combinations of tracks and cars when setting up a new Custom Championship are endless and we do hope that players will find new and cool challenges for them selves through this part of the game.

GSUK: Which tracks have you added for this year?

DS: WTCC 2007 features three new tracks where two are world exclusives, these are the city tracks of Pau and Porto and then the wonderful Zandvoort track.

In addition we also feature new tracks in form of Imola, Estoril and variations of most of the tracks in the game, these are alternate layouts such as the Brands Hatch Indy layout, and many of those we offer in reverse versions also.

RACE07 features 1 track that is not a real track, we like to refer to this track as a real-life fantasy track, it is called Vara Raceway and it is a 4km city track in town of Vara where SimBin Headquarters is located.

GSUK: Which of the tracks was most challenging to recreate to the high level of realism you want?

DS: Macau, Pau and Porto is a big challenge to recreate for the simple reason that these tracks only exists during the weekend of the races, they are temporary city tracks and once the race is over the tracks are dismantled and the city returns to its normal self. This puts a lot of pressure on the track dev team and the reference team.

GSUK: How much variation is there in weather for each track, and how much effect does this have on driving?

DS: The weather varies from dry to rain to heavy rain and the more it rains the harder it becomes to drive the cars on the limit. The tyre physics of RACE07 supports all sorts of weather and there is a unique tyre model for both dry and wet tyres.

GSUK: With the new AI and damage modelling system, among other changes, does this year’s WTCC game require hardware much in advance of last year’s?

DS: RACE07 has the same system requirements as RACE but we have actually managed to get better performance from the game while using the same hardware, in addition to the track side objects, 3D spectators and improved tarmac textures.

RACE07 also features a performance monitor that should help the user find a proper balance between performance and the visual quality of the game.

GSUK: How much of a consideration are the hardware specifications of your potential players when making each iteration of the series?

DS: They are a great concern, we would like any kind of computer to be able to run the game, but at the same time there is a public and an inner industry demand of new and improved graphics and new/improved game modes. We try to find the best possible compromise between being able to allow as many potential players to get access to the game while being able to deliver a new look to each game in the series. This is a big, big challenge..

GSUK: What level of customisation will racers have over their cars, both in terms of looks and performance?

DS: The player can create a new skin or download a skin and implement it in the game, they can do this for any car featured by the game. Performance enhancements can be found through tweaking the mechanical setup of each car.

GSUK: Have you got any plans to branch out onto other platforms?

DS: Yes we do, but that is all I can say at this time.

GSUK: Which features were you hoping to see make it into RACE 07 that didn’t, and can we expect to see them for RACE 08?

DS: As mentioned earlier in this interview we have a very internal wish list of features, game modes and content that we would like to see in our games, some of these will one day make it into our games but when is hard for me to say at this time. As for the features, game modes and content I would hate to reveal anything now and then find these ideas implemented in a competitors game before we get a change to do it ourselves 

I can however say that RACE07 and the approach taken with this production is a hint of what’s to come! In the coming months SimBin will reveal more about the future and what might come next. I for one cannot wait to share this with our fans and I am super excited about where we are heading with our racing games.

GSUK: Finally: What do you think the development team are proudest of in the game?

DS: Wow that is a tough one to answer, I think that we are all proud of different elements in the game, the track and car artists are proud of what they have managed to do with the tracks and cars, the creative team is proud of the overall presentation of the game and its game modes and features and the programmers are of course proud of their achievement of making all the components of the game work as they where intended.

I think what we are all most proud of is that a small company like SimBin is now releasing its 5th high end racing game. The gaming industry is not an easy one to make it in but we are still here and we still deliver racing games true to the format of SimBin. We have in some instances helped define the racing games genre and even, I would think, helped to inspire other companies while doing their racing games, which is something we should be proud of.

GSUK: Thank you for your time.